Europa

Robert Mills

Description

A story of love and betrayal among the first colonists of Jupiter's moon Europa. A book that imagines people's every-day lives in a colony established in caves beneath the surface of Jupiter's icy moon. It is the 21st century and severe overcrowding on Earth has led to the creation of colonies on Lunar and Mars and Jupiter's moon, Callisto. As children Symon Shaw and Marvin Piper become best friends, a friendship that survives into adult life. Marvin is ambitious and has a talent for business but Symon drifts aimlessly through life with no real purpose. When a new colony is established on another of Jupiter's moons, Europa, Marvin invites Symon to join his company when it relocates there. They prosper in the colony and Marvin invites Symon to become his business partner.Treatment for infertility, including diagnostic tests, has been previously banned in an attempt to limit population growth. Symon and his wife Meena have two children, but Marvin and Liv remain childless. In a desperate attempt to have a child, Marvin asks Symon to have sex with Liv. She becomes pregnant but loses the baby. Liv implores Symon to continue making love to her and he agrees, though he knows that Marvin would not approve. Liv remains detached, but Symon falls more and more in love with her. When their relationship is discovered the consequences are devastating for both couples

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781788034272
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Europa






Robert Mills
Copyright © 2017 Robert Mills

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 9781788034272

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
Europa is one of Jupiter’s moons and is named after a beautiful Phoenician princess of that name. According to Greek mythology, Zeus saw her gathering flowers and immediately fell in love with her. He transformed himself into a white bull and carried her off to Crete where he made her Queen. Zeus later recreated the shape of the white bull in the stars, forming a constellation now known as Taurus.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter One
Childhood memories are fragmented and highly selective. The summers of my youth consist of long hot days and the winters of bright sun and crisp snow. Little is fully retained, but I do remember the first day I met my cousin Marvin quite well and the weather was, as I recall, dull and overcast but dry. It seems ridiculous that one of my most enduring memories should include the weather, especially as I’ve spent the last forty years living in an environment where the temperature and humidity are carefully controlled and rain, wind and snow simply don’t exist.
My brother and I had been told of our cousin’s visit several weeks beforehand and had looked forward to the day with great excitement. Our experience of family members prior to this had mainly been confined to aged aunts and uncles, so the prospect of meeting a family member who was roughly our own age was a new experience for us. My father’s younger sister had married a man who worked as a diplomat and had been attached to the European Federation’s embassy in North America for several years. On their return to England they’d decided to set up home in the city of Oakwood, where we then lived. At that time Oakwood was still outside the edge of Greater London, but by the time I left home to go to university it had been swallowed by the encroaching metropolitan sprawl.
When the day itself came, I woke early and bombarded my mother with questions about the visitors. Our parents hadn’t seen Marvin since he was a baby, so she could do little to satisfy my curiosity. I knew that he was two years older than me and this at the time seemed an enormous difference. For my younger brother Tom, who was three years younger still, it must have appeared to be an unbridgeable chasm. But Tom, always a confident and unflappable child, made little of it.
The morning seemed to be interminable. We decided to watch a holographic film, but somehow it failed to hold our attention. From time to time Tom would get up and go to a front window to see if the visitors had arrived. I remained in my seat, though I would have liked to join him. At last we heard the high-pitched whine of a vehicle approaching the house and, rushing to the door, saw a small, silver-coloured electric car come to a stop outside. Its doors opened upwards and from the back seat a tall, lanky boy with sandy hair and freckles climbed out. We hurried out to greet the guests and I stepped forwards with an outstretched hand. “You must be Marvin,” I said. “I’m Symon and this is my brother Tom.” The gesture seems ridiculously formal to me now. After all, I was a boy of nine. But I am prone to gestures of inappropriate formality. It is a trait that would manifest itself again many years later in a ‘health club’ on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, but more of that later.
Marvin, however, was clearly at ease with my manner. He smiled and shook my hand warmly. “Glad to meet you too,” he said with a reassuring smile.
By then my mother had realised that the guests had arrived and came out to welcome them.
“Synthia,” she cooed, “so lovely you could come. And this must be Marvin. My, what a big boy you are. Have you got a kiss for your aunty?” Marvin was clearly embarrassed, but he bravely applied his lips to my mother’s heavily powdered cheek.
“Do come through,” she continued. “It’s quite warm really, so I thought we could sit in the garden. Is that alright, Synthia? You boys can play on the lawn. Why don’t you have a game of cricket or something?”
Escaping the malign influence of the adults, we led Marvin to the lawn that stretched from the terrace behind the house down to the vegetable garden and was large and flat enough to accommodate a game of garden cricket. Even at that time having a garden of any kind was a luxury and ours was an oasis in a desert of ultra-high-rise buildings. Some years later my parents were forced to sell the garden for building. They got a good price for it as the demand for land was escalating exponentially as the population of England grew at a frightening rate.
Fortunately my father was a keen follower of cricket so we were allowed to play on the lawn, a pleasure that was denied to many of my school friends. There were, however, a number of additional rules not laid down by the game’s governing body that my mother insisted on. We had to play with a tennis ball rather than a cricket ball and fielders must take extreme care when retrieving it from the flowerbeds. Constant complaints from my brother had led to the addition of another rule which stated that each player must have equal opportunity to bat, even if Tom was repeatedly dismissed by my beautifully crafted in-swingers.
Marvin, it turned out, had no talent for cricket. He waved his bat vaguely at my first delivery, which flew harmlessly through into the hands of Tom, who was keeping wicket. The second removed his middle stump as he failed to offer a stroke. Tom took strike and, having survived the rest of my over, faced Marvin’s bowling. The first three balls were well wide of the stumps. Tom tried manfully to pursue them and make contact, but all in vain. The fourth was on line, but slow and straight, and Tom had no difficulty in dispatching it into the middle of the geraniums. The fifth and sixth were similarly punished. I took the ball again and produced a delivery of lively medium pace that pitched just outside the off stump. Tom was tempted to drive but got an edge that should have carried to Marvin, who was standing well back with the wicket-keeping gloves clasped together, but he failed to catch it. I tried my slower ball and Tom obligingly scooped it up so that I could take an easy catch.
It was my turn to bat. I was a useful all-rounder in those days and would later become a regular member of the first eleven at my secondary school. Neither Marvin nor Tom was able to get me out and I scored freely around the wicket. On the terrace my mother and aunt were enjoying their cold drinks and chattering constantly. Unfortunately, my mother was also keeping an eye on the progress of the game.
“You’ve been batting too long, Symon, let the others have a turn,” she called. Reluctantly I relinquished the bat and donned the gloves, standing up for Tom’s slow bowling. Soon a thick edge enabled me to take an easy catch as Marvin flailed ineffectively at the ball. Before long the inequality of the contest extinguished our enjoyment and we adjourned to the terrace to collect glasses of Supa-soda, which we consumed in the shade of the enormous ash tree at the very bottom of the garden.
The clouds had broken to reveal patches of blue sky. We lay on our backs on the soft turf and looked up through the branches. We talked and talked, completely at ease in each other’s company. After all these years, I can’t remember what we spoke about, but I do recall feeling that in Marvin I had found a kindred spirit.
At length we heard my mother’s voice from the terrace summoning us to lunch. After we’d finished, we ran out to the garden. This time we made up an adventure in which we were fearless space troopers fighting against overwhelming alien hordes. We stormed their stronghold and braved cosmic storms in our spaceship on our return journey to Earth. We were in the middle of re-entry when we were called in for tea. Afterwards it was time for Marvin to go home, the sound of our reluctant goodbyes ringing in his ears.
This was undoubtedly a turning point in my life. I was, I suppose, already emerging from childhood and moving uncertainly towards adolescence. Childhood had been a secure environment populated with reassuring fantasies. Our house was a world of its own and each room was a